to obtain, of Ampthill, a royal grant, in which the Duke has but sixteen years to come.  You know enough of that court, to know that, in the article of Bedfordshire, no influence has any weight with his grace.  At present, indeed, I believe little is tried.  The Duchess and Lady Bute are as hostile as possible.  Rigby’s journey convinces me of what I have long suspected, that his reign is at an end.  I have even heard, though I am far from trusting to the quarter from which I had my intelligence, that the Duke has been making overtures to Mr. Pitt,(658) which have not been received unfavourably; I shall know more of this soon, as I am to go to Stowe in three or four days.  Mr. Pitt is exceedingly well-disposed to your brother, talks highly of him, and of the injustice done to him, and they are to meet on the first convenient opportunity.  Thus much for politics, which, however, I cannot quit, without again telling you how sensible I am of all your goodness and friendly offers.

The Court, independent of politics, makes a strange figure.  The recluse life led here at Richmond, which is carried to such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen’s friseur waits on them at dinner, and that four pounds only of beef are allowed for their soup, disgusts all sorts of people.  The drawing-rooms are abandoned:  Lady Buckingham(659) was the only woman there on Sunday se’nnight.  The Duke of York was commanded home.  They stopped his remittances,(660) and then were alarmed on finding he still was somehow or other supplied with money.  The two next Princes(661) are at the Pavilions at Hampton Court, in very private circumstances indeed; no household is to be established for Prince William, who accedes nearer to the malcontents every day.  In short, one hears of nothing but dissatisfaction, which in the city rises almost to treason.

Mrs. Cornwallis(662) has found that her husband has been dismissed from the bedchamber this twelvemonth with no notice:  his appointments were even paid; but on this discovery they are stopped.

You ask about what I had mentioned in the beginning of my letter, the dissensions in the house of Grafton.  The world says they are actually parted:  I do not believe that; but I will tell you exactly all I know.  His grace, it seems, for many months has kept one Nancy Parsons,(663) one of the commonest creatures in London, one much liked, but out of date.  He is certainly grown immoderately attached to her, so much, that it has put an end to all his decorum.  She was publicly with him at Ascot races, and is now in the forest;(664) I do not know if actually in the house.  At first, I concluded this was merely stratagem to pique the Duchess; but it certainly goes further.  Before the Duchess laid in, she had a little house on Richmond-Hill, whither the Duke sometimes, though seldom, came to dine.  During her month of confinement, he was scarcely in town at all, nor did he even come up to see the Duke of